


Sleeping Alone

by Mutie (Chiropter)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, F/F, I don't even know okay, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-02
Updated: 2011-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:22:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiropter/pseuds/Mutie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You bend down to place lilies on Jane Crocker’s grave in dappled sunlight, and, as the wind rustles through the trees, you silently weep for what she’s missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Oh gosh sorry, what am I doing, why did I write this, what is wrong with me etc  
> This has a purpose I swear, which will be revealed in the second part! However I am not posting that yet for the same reason I have yet to update The Sweet Days of Summer; I'm waiting for Mom and Bro to get their names revealed c:  
> Now here, have a massive dose of angst.

You hate the colour black.

You never used to hate it. You’d thought it glamorous, enticing- a perfect compliment to your slim figure, a perfect mask to showcase sparkling eyes. Yet now, you hate it more than anything.

It’s winter, and it’s snowing. People come and go. They swarm round you like birds; anxious mother ducks preening their last poor, runty duckling, never once thinking that perhaps the little chick needed space to grow. They murmur words of sympathy with eyes bright with pain, and you mouth silent replies with eyes that will never be bright again. You haven’t been doing a whole lot of talking lately. Hell, you haven’t been doing a whole lot of anything lately. It’s funny- you used to drink all the time, and you had always assumed that it would be your first impulse as soon as you needed comforting, but you have yet to touch a single drop. You cannot afford to stop thinking about her. If you do, she’ll be gone forever.

You have yet to cry.

You were at work when they told you. It isn’t even like you have a particularly interesting job. You can’t justify the fact you weren’t with her with how much you love it or how much it matters- you work in a shitty café down, and there are at least a bazillion other employees who could have taken that shift. It wasn’t as if you took it for any special reason, either. You just thought a bit of extra cash would be nice. So you kissed her goodbye, and you put on your coat, and she waved you goodbye and said “I’ll see you later” and you had absolutely no reason not to believe her.

You didn’t really know what say when the call came through and they told you Jane Crocker was dead.

Yes, you hate the colour black. It’s the colour people wear when they feel the need to show they’re sad. That’s all it is. A show. They fear that, were they to dress in anything else, they’d be looked upon with scorn despite barely having known her. You knew her. God, did you know her. You still know her, and the person you know will never change, even while you grow up and grow old; which is a prospect becoming steadily less appealing the more you consider it. There is just so much time. Countless, monotonous years, waterlogged and dripping with the tatters of- this, this awful thing that eats you up and crouches, gargoyle-like, on your heart.

You will fix this. Whatever it takes, you are going to fix this.

\---

It’s early. It’s been two autumns since Jane died, and you are steadily getting used to not having her around. You sold the house. You couldn’t live there any longer; although it was just an apartment, it was too big for you alone, and her memory haunted every inch of it. For a while, that had been a comfort. But your mother had eventually persuaded you that it was unhealthy to linger on the past too long, and you had agreed with her, though you didn’t think you could ever linger on anything else. (For you were of the secret belief that, if you relived your time with her in your mind, then it was still replaying over and over somewhere in the past, like old data. Deleted, yes, and unreachable- but not gone. Never gone.) So now you sit alone by the big bay window in your mother’s house, and outside drizzle patters the roof in the chill grey light of morning.

It’s early, and you are drinking. Well, old habits die hard, after all. And the drink is warm, and the warmth fills your belly in ways tears never could. You have cried, now. You have cried plenty of times, and come to the conclusion that it gets you nowhere (except, perhaps, to sleep.) So you have taken up drinking again, and you are thankful for the numbness it brings.

You stayed with Jake not too long ago, just for a couple of weeks. It had hurt, and that had helped. With him, you were able to talk or to not talk on equal levels, and he understood. Strider is coming to visit next summer, apparently. You think you’ll like that. You remember when, not so many years ago, you could hardly stand him.

Yes, you’re growing up.

\---

It’s spring, and it has been a little over four years since Jane Crocker’s car was hit by a lorry and the shovel gave one final cut of turf to her ashes. You’ve come with English and Strider to visit her. You’re wearing your best white dress, and the sunlight is making your skin seem paler. You look, according to Strider, like a ghost. The sun is shining, though its light is watery and timid, and it feels strangely hot on your pasty arms. The graveyard is certainly very beautiful. It’s supposed to be a garden of death but the closer you look, the more bizarre that seems. How could somewhere so lovely- so quiet, so sunny and so lovely- be a place where bodies lie? It is so easy to forget what sleeps beneath the stones. Could your Jane really be marked only by a rock covered in scratched words and lichen?

You stand in front of the grave, and you can feel tears rise in your chest, though you are smiling. You glance at Jake, and he nods, once.

You bend down to place lilies on Jane Crocker’s grave in dappled sunlight, and, as the wind rustles through the trees, you silently weep for what she’s missing.

\---

It is summer, and you are sleeping. Your cat is curled beside you, his warm purrs reverberating through your own body, and though the added heat is uncomfortable it is welcome nonetheless. You are tired, you have realised. You are more tired than you have ever been, as if, for the past six years, you have been running away from something. Or towards something. Someone. But you are so very tired, and perhaps, finally, you can afford to slow down. So you are going to sleep- shit, do you need it. Your mother reminded you, not too long ago, of a children’s story that tells of a race between a tortoise and a hare. At the time, you didn’t understand why, but now you think you do.

Jane was everything to you. Best friend, lover, everything, and you miss her. Though you deleted her number from your phone long ago, you sometimes check your messages at the time she used to finish work, just in case. Often, you think you see her- in the street, or at a club, or ordering a drink in the line in front of you on early Monday morning visits to the nearest coffee shop. But you are beginning to think that, maybe, you can learn to live without her.

Time to slow down, little rodent. Maybe, in this case, slow and steady won’t win the race- but Jane already beat you and besides, this race is different, isn’t it? Maybe, by slowing down, you’ll understand why you’re running.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll learn that winning was never the point at all.


End file.
